Tag Archives | Racial Profiling

After much concern from nonprofit groups like the NY Civil Liberties Union (and public outcry), the NYPD has finally released the numbers of their precinct and racial demographics of all the 2011 stop-and-frisks. Emerging accounts and audio have indicated a high order of racial profiling, and the results of NYPD’s own internal reporting confirms that this bias exists in practice.

Ninety percent of stops in all of the city were of black and Latino people, and many of the neighborhoods with the most stops are majority black or Hispanic.

Brooklyn’s 75th precinct, covering East New York and Cypress Hills, ranked first, with 31,000 stops. Ninety-seven percent where of blacks and Latinos. In second came BK’s 73rd precinct, covering Brownsville, which logged 25,167 stops, 98 percent of which were against people of color. Queens’s 115th precinct, covering East Elmhurst Corona and Jackson Heights, came in third with 18,156, 93 percent were of blacks and Latinos.

The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program has created two very distinct sets of experiences for the residents of New York City. One portion of the population’s experience embodies relative freedom as we legally and culturally understand it. However, for minority residents of the city, the experience is part of a larger ongoing relationship to the state as potential crime-suspects and targets of surveillance and harassment. One city, two radically different experiences.

For those of you who have never had the displeasure of experiencing the city as a potential crime-suspect, stop-and-frisk is a tactic that essentially allows police to conduct a search of any person of their choosing at any time. So what defines “a person of their choosing?” Reasonable suspicion can be based on something as simple as “movement” or “clothing.” In 2011, so-called “furtive movements” provided the justification for a stop in more than 50% of 685,724 cases, while “clothes commonly used in a crime” was cited in more than 30,000 instances.

More than a decade after 9/11, heightened security at U.S. airports has become routine, yet some religious and minority groups say they’re unfairly singled out for even more screening. Well, now there’s an app for that.

The mobile app is called FlyRights. Travelers who suspect they have been profiled take out their smartphone, tap a finger on the app and answer about a dozen questions. Then they hit “submit” and an official complaint is filed immediately with the Transportation Security Administration.

The app is the work of civil rights groups led by The Sikh Coalition. Amardeep Singh, co-founder of the Coalition, says the idea came from Sikh entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who felt they were being stopped unfairly at airports, too often.

“They literally said to one of our staff members, ‘There should be an app for that’,” Amardeep said. “We thought, great idea, let’s start working on it.”

The young black German whose refusal to show police his ID led to a court ruling that cops could use skin colour as a criteria for spot-checks, says he will fight the case all the way.

Speaking to The Local, the 25-year-old student said he was disappointed by the verdict which has provoked a storm of outrage. One human rights lawyer called for the judge to be dismissed, while his own lawyer says he will take the case to the Constitutional Court if necessary.

“I don’t want to believe it — that my country now supports this, it is terrible,” the student said.

“The police have been told they can do this — no-one is thinking of the person getting hurt. I just wish every kind of racism would stop; it is horrid how people are treated by those who think they are lesser.” The student, who asked not to be identified, said he often took the train from Kassel, where he studies, to visit family in Frankfurt.

Afterwards, agents told him not to worry ... because he's "boring"... but apparently he was just interesting enough to merit between 3 to 6 months of observation ... and a GPS tracker under his car. From Kim Zetter at Wired. Enjoy the article ... and consider its ramifications.

A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do.

It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday.

The answer came when half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers appeared at Yasir Afifi’s apartment complex in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday demanding he return the device.

President Barack Obama, along with the Justice Department, filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona for the passing of an immigration law that would allow the failure of carrying proper documentation subject to arrest. This lawsuit may be taken to court as early as today. Making this the sixth lawsuit against Arizona, many people have argued that the law allows local law enforcement to hassle citizens based on racial profiling.

Arizona has argued, and fine-tuned the law, to emphasize the fact that officers will not perform random spot checks, but will enforce the law once someone has brought attention to themselves because of another law-breaking action. This questions if “reasonable doubt” could easily be jaywalking, broken tail light, etc. Although this law has been widely contested throughout the country, according to Los Angeles Times, Arizona has already received $120,000 in private donations throughout the nation,to defend the law. In President Obama’s speech on comprehensive immigration reform, on July 1, he addressed the concern over Arizona:

“States like Arizona have decided to take matters into their own hands.